Terms of Use — Hungry Shelf

Effective date: 24 August 2026 Last updated: 24 August 2026

These Terms are a binding agreement between you and Udaya Shree Donthula, an individual developer trading as Hungry Shelf ("Hungry Shelf", "we", "us"). There is no company behind the app. By downloading or using the Hungry Shelf app you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the app.

1. Who may use Hungry Shelf

You must be at least 13 years old (16 in the EEA/UK where local law requires it) and able to form a binding contract. If you use the app on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

2. Your account, and using the app without one

You may browse and import recipes as a guest, with your library stored on your device. Some features — hands-free cook mode, photo scanning and cloud backup of your library — require an account.

You are responsible for keeping your credentials secure and for activity under your account. Tell us at hungryshelfinfo@gmail.com if you suspect unauthorised use. Guest libraries live only on your device: if you delete the app or lose the phone without signing in, that data is gone and we cannot recover it.

3. What Hungry Shelf does

Hungry Shelf is a personal recipe organiser. It uses AI to extract recipe information from links you share (social posts, video posts and web pages) and from photos you take of cookbook pages or handwritten cards, and it provides a hands-free voice assistant while you cook.

Hungry Shelf is a tool for organising recipes for your own personal use. It is not a publisher, a recipe author, or a nutritional, dietary or medical service.

4. AI-generated results are not guaranteed to be correct

Recipe extraction, translation, unit conversion, substitution suggestions and the voice assistant are produced by AI. They can be wrong, incomplete or misleading — ingredients may be missed, quantities or units may be misread, and steps may be reordered or omitted.

You must review any extracted or generated recipe against the original source before cooking from it. We make no warranty that AI output is accurate, complete or fit for any purpose.

5. Food safety, allergies and health — important

Read this before you cook.

• Always verify ingredients, quantities, cooking temperatures and cooking times against the original recipe and reliable food-safety guidance.
• **If you have a food allergy, intolerance or medical condition, do not rely on Hungry Shelf.** AI extraction may omit or misstate an allergen, and substitution suggestions may introduce one. Check every ingredient yourself.
• Hungry Shelf gives no nutritional, dietary or medical advice. Nothing in the app is a substitute for advice from a qualified professional.
• You are solely responsible for safe food handling, storage, cooking temperatures and the safe use of appliances and knives.

6. Hands-free use while cooking

Cook mode is designed to reduce phone handling in the kitchen. It is still your responsibility to cook safely: keep your attention on hot surfaces, sharp tools and open flames, and do not rely on the app for timing anything where a failure could hurt you or spoil food unsafely.

7. Imported content and other people's rights

This is the part that matters most, so it is stated plainly.

• Recipes and media you import remain the property of their original creators. Hungry Shelf claims no ownership of them and does not licence them to you.
• We do not create, review, verify or endorse third-party content, and we are not responsible for its accuracy, legality, safety or availability.
• Importing is provided for your personal, non-commercial organisation of content you are permitted to use. You are solely responsible for ensuring your import and use of any content complies with copyright law and with the terms of service of the source platform (for example Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube or a recipe website).
• We store and show the source link with imported recipes so the original creator can be credited and found. That attribution does not transfer any rights to you.
• Do not use Hungry Shelf to republish, redistribute, sell or commercially exploit someone else's recipe or media.
• Source platforms may change or block access at any time. Imports may stop working for particular sites, and that is not a defect in the app.

Copyright complaints

If you believe content processed through Hungry Shelf infringes your copyright, email hungryshelfinfo@gmail.com with: identification of the work, the URL or recipe concerned, your contact details, a statement of good-faith belief, a statement that your notice is accurate, and your signature. We will remove infringing material and may terminate repeat infringers. Designated agent for copyright notices: Udaya Shree Donthula, hungryshelfinfo@gmail.com.

8. Your content

You keep all rights to the recipes, notes and cookbooks you create or import. To run the app, you grant us a limited, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, copy, transmit and process that content — including sending it to our AI and hosting providers — solely to provide the features you asked for. That licence ends when you delete the content or your account, subject to the retention periods in our Privacy Policy.

We do not use your content to train AI models, and we do not publish it.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• import or upload content you have no right to use, or content that is illegal, hateful, sexual, violent or harmful;
• attempt to bypass free-tier limits, paywalls, quotas or rate limits, or share accounts to do so;
• scrape, resell or provide the app's import or voice capability as your own service
• reverse-engineer the app, probe our infrastructure, or interfere with its operation except to the extent this restriction is prohibited by law;
• use automated tooling to submit imports at volume.

We may suspend or terminate access for breach of this section.

10. Free tier and Hungry Shelf Plus

Free tier

The free tier includes your recipe library, cookbooks, step-by-step cooking, and a limited allowance of AI imports. As shipped, that allowance is 2 full video/link extractions, 2 photo scans, and a daily cap of 25 caption-based imports, after which link imports fall back to caption-only extraction until the next day. These limits are cost controls and may change — the current limits are always shown in the app.

Hungry Shelf Plus

Hungry Shelf Plus is an auto-renewing subscription that unlocks unlimited full imports, photo scanning and hands-free cook voice. It is offered as monthly, 3-monthly and annual plans. The 3-monthly plan may include a 7-day free trial where the store offers one.

• Price and currency are shown in the app before you buy, taken live from Google Play or the App Store for your region, and include applicable taxes where the store collects them.
• Auto-renewal: your subscription renews automatically at the end of each period unless you cancel at least 24 hours before it ends. Your store account is charged at the start of each renewal.
• Free trial: if a trial applies, cancelling before it ends avoids any charge. Otherwise it converts to a paid subscription automatically at the price shown.
• Cancelling: cancel any time in Google Play → Subscriptions, or Apple ID → Subscriptions. Cancelling stops future renewals; you keep Plus until the end of the paid period. Uninstalling the app does not cancel a subscription, and deleting your Hungry Shelf account does not cancel it either.
• Refunds are handled by Google or Apple under their policies, not by us. We cannot refund a store purchase directly. Consumers in the EU/UK and other jurisdictions keep any statutory withdrawal or refund rights that apply.
• Fair use: hands-free cook voice and AI imports are expensive to run, so Plus is subject to abuse-prevention limits (currently on the order of 30 voice sessions and 20 photo scans per hour). We will not apply these to normal personal cooking use.
• Restoring: use "Restore purchases" in Profile if you reinstall or change devices, using the same store account.

We may change prices or plan contents. Changes take effect at your next renewal, and we will give you notice and the chance to cancel first, as the stores require.

11. Availability and changes to the app

We may change, suspend or discontinue any feature at any time. Import support for a particular source may break without notice when that platform changes. We aim to keep the service available but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation.

12. Third-party services

The app relies on third parties including Google, Apple, Supabase, OpenAI, Supadata and the source platforms you import from. Their own terms and privacy policies govern their services. We are not responsible for their content, availability, pricing or conduct.

13. Our intellectual property

The app itself — its code, design, branding, name and original content — belongs to Udaya Shree Donthula and is protected by intellectual property law. Excluded from this are your content and third-party imported content. You get a personal, revocable, non-transferable, non-exclusive licence to use the app under these Terms. "Hungry Shelf" and our logo may not be used without written permission.

14. Disclaimer of warranties

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the app is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind — express or implied — including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy of AI output, and uninterrupted or error-free operation.

Some jurisdictions do not allow exclusion of implied warranties, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing here limits non-excludable consumer rights.

15. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Udaya Shree Donthula is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost data, lost profits, spoiled food, illness or injury arising from reliance on AI-extracted or AI-generated recipe content, or from third-party content.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the app is limited to the greater of the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or USD 50.

We do not exclude liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

16. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify Udaya Shree Donthula against claims, damages and reasonable legal costs arising from your content, your imports, your breach of these Terms, or your infringement of anyone else's rights.

17. Termination

You may stop using the app at any time and delete your account in Profile → Settings → Delete account. We may suspend or terminate your access for breach of these Terms, for legal reasons, or if we discontinue the service. Sections 7, 8, 14, 15, 16 and 18 survive termination.

18. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict of law rules, and the courts of India have exclusive jurisdiction — except that consumers may bring proceedings in their country of residence where local law gives them that right, and mandatory local consumer protections continue to apply.

19. Store-specific terms

Apple App Store. These Terms are between you and us only, not Apple. Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the app. If the app fails to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple may refund the purchase price; Apple has no other warranty obligation. Apple is not responsible for product liability, third-party IP claims, or legal compliance claims relating to the app. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them. You confirm you are not located in a country subject to a U.S. embargo and are not on a U.S. prohibited-parties list.

Google Play. Your use is also subject to the Google Play Terms of Service. Subscriptions bought through Google Play are billed and refunded under Google's policies.

20. General

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between us. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stands. Our failure to enforce a right is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger or sale.

We may update these Terms. Material changes will be notified in the app or by email before taking effect, and the "Last updated" date above will change.

21. Contact

Udaya Shree Donthula Individual developer trading as Hungry Shelf hungryshelfinfo@gmail.com